Artist and colorist leave DC Vertigo’s ‘Border Town’ in response to abuse allegations against writer Eric M. Esquivel

Heads up: this article contains discussion of sexual assault and links to a graphic recount of events that allegedly occurred.

Artist Ramon Villalobos, and colorist Tamra Bonvillain have announced that they will leave DC Vertigo’s wildly popular series Border Town in response to sexual abuse allegations levied against the series’ writer, Eric M. Esquivel. 

The allegations, posted publicly by an ex-partner of Esquivel’s, Cynthia Naugle on her Twitter account via link to her personal blog on December 9, 2018, detailed a history of emotional and sexual abuse affected by a person referred to as “X”, who works in the comic books industry. While Naugle’s initial post makes no direct reference to Esquivel, subsequent postings from industry insiders, as well as retweets from Naugle herself, indicate that the person referred to as “X”, is in fact Esquivel. 

On December 12, both Villalobos and Bonvillain shared messages indicating their exit from the book, and support for Naugle. Those tweets are included below:

Both DC Vertigo, and Esquivel, have yet to share a public statement. However, Esquivel did delete several social media channels prior to the news being made public, and set his Twitter to private.